As the end of winter break for many schoolchildren is rapidly approaching, parents with children in Seattle, Washington schools have an alarming deadline looming over them: vaccinate their children for measles, or face expulsion.
According to The Seattle Times, students missing the measles combination shot from their vaccine records will be corralled into a “designated room at their school while their families are notified.”
If that isn’t the most Orwellian thing you’ve ever heard! These perfectly healthy children will be rounded up like lepers or criminals and quarantined at school until their parents retrieve them. This is horrific!
The measure comes as an apparent last resort for schools attempting to corner parents who aren’t complying with state laws regarding vaccine records.
Under state law, parents and guardians are supposed to provide schools with either proof of vaccination or exemption within 30 days of the beginning of the school year. Many districts, however, including Seattle, Bellevue, and Lake Washington, have struggled with families simply not providing paperwork for their children, according to a report from the state auditor’s office. During the 2017-2018 school year, the Times notes, 14 percent of Seattle kindergartners were out of compliance. The report also found that about 10 percent of school districts didn’t supply the state with data about their vaccination rates at all.
The district, which schools about 53,000 students, still doesn’t have vaccination or exemption paperwork for 2,247 of them, said district spokesman Tim Robinson. The district sent letters to their families earlier this month. On January 6, the Monday that children return from winter break and two days before the exclusion deadline, they will also receive a warning call.
The state’s attempt to squeeze schools for more control over families’ medical choices comes as no surprise as more states fall like dominoes to the vaccine mandate agenda.
This year, Washington passed a law restricting philosophical or personal belief exemptions for vaccines, forcing parents to either secure a religious or medical exemption or get the measles, mumps, and rubella shot (MMR) for their child. It is one of many knee-jerk reactionary pieces of legislation passed after waves of measles, once a common childhood illness in America, hit various states over the last few years.
As for Washington’s religious exemptions, they are among the trickier-worded exemptions of all the states. Where some states simply allow the parent to state that they object to vaccination due to religious reasons, Washington parents are instructed on the state’s exemption form to only use the religious exemption option if they “belong to a church or religion that objects to the use of medical treatment.”
The actual state law, however, states that a written certification of the fact that “the religious beliefs of the [parent or guardian] are contrary to the required immunization measures” is sufficient for a religious exemption. So which is it??
This is what happens when ignorant state legislators get involved in medical and religious issues they clearly know nothing about. Typical of government, they cause nothing but confusion. And, as a result, families suffer.
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